[sc34wg3] Supporting variants in TMCL

[Graham Moore]

Hi,

I would like to reiterate Lars' point. TMCL does support constraining
variants. The variants data structure (in context of names types,
topic of types) becomes quite chunky and the various means by which
they can be constrained is not as clean / simple and straightforward
as for the other constructs.

If there is a proposal to prioritise a certain variant constraint
pattern we should consider it, but be aware of the capabilities and
perhaps simplicity of defining variant constraints in TMQL.

Graham

2009/11/3 Lars Heuer <heuer at semagia.com>:
> Hi all,
>
> The paper is not a proof that we need variants (section 4.3 describes
> a model without variants), it describes another model "containers of
> names" where each "container" represents a group of names which have
> somehow a relation to each other.
>
> Unfortunately, the paper does not elaborate in detail the differences
> to TMDM scope and I wonder why Xuân stops at topic names and does not
> propose to make occurrences also "culture-neutral": If a topic map
> author says, IBM has the website "http://www.ibm.com/de/", the topic
> map wouldn't be culture-neutral since another user may prefer the
> website "http://www.ibm.com/nl/" or "http://www.ibm.com/fr/". If we
> think the the idea of containers consequently to the end, we need
> also "containers of occurrences".
>
> And don't we have a model that supports these containers already? I
> think TMRM supports Xuân's proposal and the containers of occurrences
> directly:
>
>  name#1 := {name: "Constantinople",
>             name: "Konstantinopolis",
>             name: "Konstantiniyye"}
>
> Anyway, I don't want to discuss the paper in detail here since I think
> neither the name-containers nor the occurrence-containers have a
> connection to the discussion how we can support variants in TMCL
> directly (note that *TMCL supports variants*, it simply does not
> provide a CTM notation / a constraint for it).
>
> If someone wants that TMCL supports variants directly, he should
> follow Lars Marius' advice and come up with a solution rather than
> pointing out how useful variants are.
>
> Best regards,
> Lars
> --
> Semagia
> <http://www.semagia.com>
>
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-- 
Graham Moore, Director, Networked Planet Limited
Editor XTM 1.0, ISO13250 (TopicMaps) -2,-3, TMCL
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